Electoral preferences in the elections to the all-Russian Constituent assembly in Belorussia in 1917.

The article encompasses the results of the author's elaboration of the 1917 elections to the Constituent Assembly statistical data recorded within the borders of the Belarusian civil districts and the Western Front. The regional particulars of electoral preferences are analyzed. Both the all-Russian leading parties (Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) and "failed parties" (Kadets, Mensheviks and People's Socialists) significance in electoral process is identified. Attention is drawn to the particular role for electoral process demonstrated by parties and organizations founded on national or confessional bases - Belarusian, Jewish, Polish, Latvian, Orthodox Coreligionists, Old Believers. The reasons for the failure of the Russian and Belarusian electoral list of candidates are elucidated. The voting paradoxical results in relation to ethnic and confessional minorities of the Belarusian region are disclosed. The concepts of "exogenous", i.e. ethnic and confessional communities not rooted in the region, and "endogenous" (rooted) communities are introduced. The author emphasizes the perspective of application of elections to the Constituent Assembly statistical data as of the tools for the insight of the "great upheavals” era ethnic and national processes.

constituent assembly, Belorussian civil districts, Western front district, Ethnical and confessional "kaleidoscope" of elections, exogenous and endogenous communities